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Mommy blogs worldwide are ablaze with a new 14 step parenting test by author Colin Bowles geared toward those thinking of joining the ranks of parenting. All for good reason: It’s HYSTERICAL.

And shockingly, it’s written by a DAD. Crazy and awesome, right?

Whether you’re planning to have children in the future or already have a growing brood of your own, you will find this “test” to be quite entertaining and (unfortunately on some points) truthful. Oh well, despite it all, there is nothing better in the world than parenthood!

14 Step Test for Future Parents

Test 1: Preparation

Women: To prepare for pregnancy

1. Put on a dressing gown and stick a beanbag down the front.

2. Leave it there.

3. After 9 months remove 5% of the beans.

Men: To prepare for children

1. Go to a local chemist, tip the contents of your wallet onto the counter and tell the pharmacist to help himself

2. Go to the supermarket. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.

3. Go home. Pick up the newspaper and read it for the last time.

Prepare for pregnancy by attaching a beanbag to your front says the blog

Test 2: Knowledge

Find a couple who are already parents and berate them about their methods of discipline, lack of patience, appallingly low tolerance levels and how they have allowed their children to run wild.

Enjoy it. It will be the last time in your life that you will have all the answers.
Test 3: Nights

To discover how the nights will feel:

You can kiss goodbye to precious beauty sleep as soon as you have a child

1. Walk around the living room from 5pm to 10pm carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 4 – 6kg, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly.

2. At 10pm, put the bag down, set the alarm for midnight and go to sleep.

3. Get up at 11pm and walk the bag around the living room until 1am.

4. Set the alarm for 3am.

5. As you can’t get back to sleep, get up at 2am and make a cup of tea.

6. Go to bed at 2.45am.

7. Get up again at 3am when the alarm goes off.

8. Sing songs in the dark until 4am.

9. Put the alarm on for 5am. Get up when it goes off.

10. Make breakfast.

Keep this up for 5 years. LOOK CHEERFUL.
Test 4: Dressing Small Children

1. Buy a live octopus and a string bag.

2. Attempt to put the octopus into the string bag so that no arms hangout.

Time Allowed: 5 minutes.

Test 5: Cars

1. Forget the BMW. Buy a practical 5-door wagon.

2. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment. Leave it there.

3. Get a coin. Insert it into the CD player.

4. Take a box of chocolate biscuits; mash them into the back seat.

5. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.

Test 6: Going for a walk

The hilarious blog post details a new parent test for broody mothers

a. Wait.

b. Go out the front door.

c. Come back in again.

d. Go out.

e. Come back in again.

f. Go out again.

g. Walk down the front path.

h. Walk back up it.

i. Walk down it again.

j. Walk very slowly down the road for five minutes.

k. Stop, inspect minutely and ask at least 6 questions about every piece of used chewing gum, dirty tissue and dead insect along the way.

l. Retrace your steps.

m. Scream that you have had as much as you can stand until the neighbours come out and stare at you.

n. Give up and go back into the house.

You are now just about ready to try taking a small child for a walk.Test 7: Conversations with children

Repeat everything you say at least 5 times.Test 8: Grocery Shopping

1. Go to the local supermarket. Take with you the nearest thing you can find to a pre-school child – a fully grown goat is excellent. If you intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat.

2. Buy your weekly groceries without letting the goat(s) out of your sight.

3. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys.

Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

Feeding your child isn’t as easy as it looks according to the test

Test 9: Feeding a 1 year-old

1. Hollow out a melon

2. Make a small hole in the side

3. Suspend the melon from the ceiling and swing it side to side

4. Now get a bowl of soggy cornflakes and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon while pretending to be an aeroplane.

5. Continue until half the cornflakes are gone.

6. Tip the rest into your lap, making sure that a lot of it falls on the floor.Test 10:TV

1. Learn the names of every character from the Wiggles, Barney, Teletubbies and Disney.

2. Watch nothing else on television for at least 5 years.Test 11: Mess

Can you stand the mess children make? To find out:

Are you up to the challenge of parenthood asks this hilarious blog post

1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains

2. Hide a fish behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.

3. Stick your fingers in the flowerbeds and then rub them on clean walls. Cover the stains with crayon. How does that look?

4. Empty every drawer/cupboard/storage box in your house onto the floor and proceed with step 5.

5. Drag randomly items from one room to another room and leave them there.

Test 12: Long Trips with Toddlers

1. Make a recording of someone shouting ‘Mummy’ repeatedly. Important Notes: No more than a 4 second delay between each Mummy. Include occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet.

2. Play this tape in your car, everywhere you go for the next 4 years.

You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.Test 13:Conversations

1. Start talking to an adult of your choice.

2. Have someone else continually tug on your shirt hem or shirt sleeve while playing the Mummy tape listed above.

You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.Test 14: Getting ready for work

1. Pick a day on which you have an important meeting.

2. Put on your finest work attire.

3. Take a cup of cream and put 1 cup of lemon juice in it

4. Stir

5. Dump half of it on your nice silk shirt

6. Saturate a towel with the other half of the mixture

7. Attempt to clean your shirt with the same saturated towel

8. Do not change (you have no time).

9. Go directly to work

You are now ready to have children. ENJOY!!

To read more from Colin Bowles’ hilarous take on fatherhood, check out his book The Beginner’s Guide to Fatherhood HERE at Amazon.com

May she be Beautiful but not Damaged, for it’s the Damage that draws the creepy soccer coach’s eye, not the the Beauty.

When the Crystal Meth is offered,

May she remember the parents who cut her grapes in half

And stick with Beer.

Guide her, protect her

When crossing the street, stepping onto boats, swimming in the ocean, swimming in pools, walking near pools, standing on the nearby subway platform, crossing 86th Street, stepping off of boats, using mall restrooms, getting on and off escalators, driving on country roads while arguing, leaning on large windows, walking in parking lots, riding Ferris wheels, roller-coasters, log flumes, or anything called “Hell Drop,” “Tower of Torture,” or “The Death Spiral Rock N’ Zero G Roll featuring Aerosmith,” and standing on any kind of balcony ever, anywhere, at any age.

Lead her away from Acting but not all the way to Finance.

Something where she can make her own hours but still feel intellectually fulfilled and get outside sometimes

And not have to wear high heels.

What would that be, Lord? Architecture? Midwifery? Golf course design? I’m asking You because if I knew, I’d be doing it, Youdammit.

May she play the Drums to the fiery rhythm of her Own Heart with the sinewy strength of her Own Arms, so she need Not Lie With Drummers.

Grant her a Rough Patch from twelve to seventeen.

Let her draw horses and be interested in Barbies for much too long,

For Childhood is short — a Tiger Flower blooming

Magenta for one day –

And Adulthood is long and Dry-Humping in Cars will wait.

O Lord, break the Internet forever,

That she may be spared the misspelled invective of her peers

And the online marketing campaign for Rape Hostel V: Girls Just Wanna Get Stabbed.

And when she one day turns on me and calls me a Bitch in front of Hollister,

Give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a cab in front of her friends,

For I will not have that Shit. I will not have it.

And should she choose to be a Mother one day, be my eyes, Lord,

That I may see her, lying on a blanket on the floor at 4:50 a.m., all-at-once exhausted, bored, and in love with the little creature whose poop is leaking up its back.

“My mother did this for me once,” she will realize as she cleans feces off her baby’s neck.

“My mother did this for me.” And the delayed gratitude will wash over her as it does each generation and she will make a Mental note to call me. And she will forget.

But I’ll know, because I peeped it with Your God eyes.

Amen.

_______________

Tina, your humor allows mothers like myself to survive each day with a smile on my face.

You are my HERO.

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There are a lot of moms out there who spend most of their day second guessing themselves. We lie in bed at night and think of all the things we should have done differently. The things we wish we could change, especially after the hard days. We wonder what our children must think of us.

Ms. Hauser asks that we all take a step back and truly look at what’s in front of us. She asks that we all work together to finally put words like “fat” or “skinny” behind us and define ourselves by who we are, not what we look like. I couldn’t agree more.

Here is the original article:

————-

On Little Girls and Body Image

I maintain something of a bicameral approach with regard to writing about my children: I write about them, but I don’t use their names (their last name is different from mine, which helps); I write about them, but I write only happy things, or uplifting things, or things that are far in the past. Nothing that would embarrass them, nothing that is truly personal and private. I owe them that, I think. They didn’t ask to be born to me.

Today I’m going to break down that wall, though, because I believe my own daughter’s well-being actually, in a very broad way, depends on it. If you know my girl, or if you ever meet her, I’m asking you here and now: Please don’t discuss the following with her. It would, genuinely, make her sad.

But how am I to remain silent, when she sits in the back of my car, tears streaming down her face and wondering, in a tiny and strangled voice, if anyone will ever love her?

The girl.

The girl is tall, and broad, and strong, and round. She is 10, and as she has throughout her young life, she has a belly. It’s not small — it’s a real belly. The kind of belly that many young girls have until they reach puberty, and which is usually eclipsed by the appearance of breasts. As girls grow into women, our shapes change — but they don’t usually change entirely. Mine didn’t. If you were born big and soft (9 lbs 3 oz, and she was four weeks early), you’re never going to become anything much different, unless you literally do physical damage to yourself in the effort.

“Do you think I’ll ever be skinny?” she asked in that same car ride.

No, honey, no. I do not think you will ever be skinny. “Skinny” (like “fat”) has no real value, it tells us nothing about the worth or even the health of the person, it’s a descriptor. It’s like “tall” or “blue” or “left-handed” — it describes something, it doesn’t tell you that thing’s worth. Or, worse yet, we’ve made “skinny” (and “fat”) into a weapon, a weapon we use to wound people.

These are almost exactly the words I used with her in the car, words very similar to words she’s heard her whole life — or, at least, since the first time she was called “fat” and understood it to be intended as a cruelty, when she was 4. When she was 9, she could already use the phrase “objectification of women” correctly.

And the other day, in that car, tears streaming down her face, she finally said “I know, but you’re training me. You’re not training the whole world.”

My daughter is exactly as God and her genes intended her to be: She is funny and lights up a room and won’t take no for an answer. She is very smart and loves being very smart and can sit in a corner and read for two hours at a stretch. She will spontaneously dance to just about anything, and will run around the playground with her friends all afternoon if time and homework allow. She is a person of healthy appetites, in all senses: She would like a bigger bite of the world, please, and also some more ice cream, while you’re up. She thoroughly enjoys her food, except when she doesn’t, at which point she can’t be bothered to have another bite. She knows that too much ice cream isn’t always good for her body, and she is learning that sometimes “no” is the best answer — but she’s always heard “no” from time to time, and always had that “no” acted upon. Her diet is healthy, and she knows that, too, and likes it. She is also, if I may, beautiful. Gorgeous, in fact, with milky-peachy skin and deep brown eyes and hair that falls in waves all around her beautiful smile.

But the girl lives in the world that her father and I cannot reach, she doesn’t live within our arms. She lives in a world where 10-year-old girls are already so bone-deep aware of how we treat women who do not fit a certain, very narrow, paradigm that they worry they will never be loved. She worries — a lot — what strangers think of her when they see her from a distance; she worries that the people who know her are kind only because they know her.

She is 10. She is healthy. She is strong. She is wicked smart. And she sat in my car, weeping about her body.

There is only so much her father and I can do, only so much real science we can bring to bear on the lies and misapprehensions peddled by the diet industry and swallowed whole by those around us. There is only so much we can do about the fact that every adult woman she comes in contact with is steeped in the same lies and misapprehensions, the vast majority of them openly bemoaning their sacred bodies and bonding over self-loathing. “I’m getting fat!” one of the girl’s friends said at school the other day, a friend who is so slight she might blow away on the next strong wind.

There’s only so much I can do. It’s already in her. And even though I never say it out loud, it’s in me too. I hate it, but there it is, telling me how little I’m worth because I refuse to punish my only body for being something other than that which I am told it should be. I cannot tell you how much it hurts me, how furious it makes me, to know that this is what she feels and what she faces. I’m weeping as I type. And there’s almost nothing I can do. I cannot train the world.

But maybe, maybe — if we all work together, maybe if we’re kinder to ourselves and each other, more loving toward these fabulous machines that move us through our lives, less willing to accept shaming that cloaks itself as wisdom — maybe together, we adults can make the world in which our little girls are growing into wonderful women a better place. Maybe.

I know that I have been guilty of this horrendous “crime” at times. I think back to all the moments that I nonchalantly made some comment about how my jeans made me look huge or when I mumbled that I couldn’t eat birthday cake at the party because I was trying to lose some weight… again. All this, I admit shamefully, went on in front of my daughters. I wish I could get those moments back. But I can’t.

And so, I must do the next best thing: Stop. Now.

I have always encouraged my daughters, told them they were beautiful and made it a point to give them compliments each and every day. Not just things like “you’re so pretty” or “you look so cute”. While those are all true, I try to instill them with the fact that they are incredibly smart, have great senses of humor and I praise them when they do nice things for others. I want those things to count more than any kind of “pretty” or “skinny” compliment ever could. So let’s join Ms. Hauser in her crusade and knock this crap off, NOW!

After all, who do our daughters idolize above all others? That’s right. Their mothers.

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The Stir wrote this article about kids and bedtime and I must admit that I’m a little amazed at how accurate it is! What do you think? Does this fit your bedtime and parenting styles?

Some of us parents watch the clock, and when it strikes a certain time, the kids must be in bed. Others, well, don’t follow schedules at all. What works for one family isn’t always going to work for another, and since it’s up to the parents on what time their kids should go to bed based on whatever their lifestyle is, then there is no “wrong” time for a kid to go to bed, now is there? Kids could most certainly not get enough sleep and that’s not healthy for them, but maybe the families who let their kids go to bed super late just have a bit of the vampire in them and everyone sleeps ’til noon.

We shouldn’t judge, but for the sake of some laughs we can make some assumptions. Because what time your kid goes to bed really does say a lot about you.

If you put your kid to bed at 6 p.m. or earlier, you are the most punctual parent around. Some call you anal, but they secretly envy you. When you say dinner is ready at 4:45, you mean 4:45 on the dot. You probably have a nice savings account, too, since you always get the early bird specials. You have no problem watching Breaking Bad as it airs because your little one is already deep in the dream state. Lucky. Maybe some of us need to learn a little from you.

If you put your kid to bed around 7 to 8 p.m., you might be one of those counting the minutes kind of parent. You are also probably no TV parent and your kids think yogurt is ice cream. You are a morning person and wake up in the bed moods (or with the strongest coffee). Your kids are never late for school.

If you put your kid to bed around 8 to 9 p.m., you might be one of those natural parents. You play classical music at bedtime, probably of the Baby Mozart variety, and maybe still nurse your older child down to sleep. You aren’t worried about everything. Your kid just kind of naturally is ready for bed around 8:30. You seem to have this parenting gig totally under control but in the most effortless way. You might also be French.

If you put your kid to bed around 9 to 11 p.m., you are most likely liberals and your family enjoys a lot of take-out because no one likes to cook. Your kids might even be hooked on some of your favorite shows and you watch them together. There’s no “you can’t eat that since it’s late” kind of talk either. You are the house every kid wants to have a sleepover at.

If you put your kid to bed after 11 p.m., you are really an anything goes kind of parent and some think you are absolutely off your rocker.

Not me though — I’m of the mindset that whatever works for your family works!